Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat leaders have threatened to go on tougher movement if the killers of its leader Shaikh Nurul Islam Faruqi were not arrested by September 14.
The leaders set the deadline in a grand protest rally in Chittagong city on Tuesday.
Faruqi was killed over conflict of Islamic beliefs and ideologies, they alleged.
The leaders of Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat also demanded ban on Peace TV and some other Islamic programmes being aired in different private television channels claiming that the TV channels and the programmes were instigating militancy.
Protesting the murder of international affairs secretary of the organisation, Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat Coordinating Committee arranged the grand protest rally in the port city’s Laldighi Ground at around 3pm.
Hundreds of leaders and activists of Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, Bangladesh Islami Front, Bangladesh Islami Chhatra Sena and other Sunni-belief organisations took part in the grand rally.
MA Matin, coordinator of Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat Coordinating Committee, read out the upcoming programmes of the organization.
“We will form a human chain in front of the National Press Club in the capital on September 13 with the participation of the country’s Islamic scholars and leaders and activists of Sunni organisations,” said MA Matin.
“We will hold a grand representative conference comprising of Islamic scholars and leaders and activists of Sunni organisations in Dhaka on September 14 from where we will declare our next programme if the killers of Faruqi were not arrested till then.”
They will arrange view exchange meeting and opinion collection of Islamic scholars and Sunni organisations across the country from September 4 to September 12, the coordinator announced.
The leaders also urged their activists for peaceful mindset in any situation during any kind of tougher programme.
Local senior leader Mufti Obaidul Haque Noimi of Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat in Chittagong presided over the programme.
Apart from Islamic scholars and Sunni leaders, Jamiatul Falah Jame Masjid Khatib Jalaluddin Al Quaderi, Ahle Sunnat Member Secretary Advocate Mosaheb Uddin Bokhtiar, Dr AKM Mahbubur Rahman spoke in the rally, among others.
On August 27, unidentified armed assailants slaughtered Faruqi, a presenter of religious programmes on Channel i, at his residence in the capital’s East Rajabazar area.
Apart from anchoring the “Shantir Pothe” and “Kafela” programmes on Channel i, he owned Faruqi Tours and Travels Private Limited, a Hajj travel agency, and served as the imam of the Supreme Court Mosque.
Soon after the murder, madrasa students and different Islamists organisations started demonstration in the port city and adjoining upazilas while they enforced a half-day shutdown across the country on last Sunday.
From the very beginning of the killing, Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat – an organisation known for opposing the views of Jamaat-e-Islami and Hefazat-e-Islam – claimed that Wahabi and Moududi followers killed their leader.
